Free LustingtheEnemy by Mel Teshco Page B

carefully, “you’ll
need to crawl through the tunnel. Even if the soldiers see you, none will be
small enough to follow.”
    She shook her head, heart banging in her throat. “No. I…I
can’t. I’m terrified of…of small spaces.”
    His hard eyes softened beneath the flickering flame. “Yes
you can. I know you can. The tunnel leads straight to the palace. Find
Fontaine. She will organize supplies for you, a horse. Then you can return to
your people before any of the soldiers discover where you are.”
    Tears rolled down her face. But it wasn’t for her incessant
fears. She couldn’t let him die! He’d saved her life, she couldn’t abandon him.
Besides, he’d need all the help he could get against his soldiers.
    She looked over his shoulder to the servants. Even with her
emotions blown to the four winds she knew they were an unorthodox lot of
fighters if ever she’d seen any.
    The cotesh women, all three of them. The eunuch,
along with three others. A wiry man she vaguely recognized as the driver of the
horse carriage. And a handful of other men she’d never seen.
    Please god, no.
    It’d be massacre. All hope shriveled, cold, hard grief
stripping what was left of her tears. Once again she’d have to watch someone
she loved die.
    Loved? I do love him. I really do .
    Her breath caught. Emotions swelled. While she still had
breath in her body, blood flowing through her veins, she wasn’t going to let
anything happen to Judas.
    She wasn’t leaving him.
    Judas cupped her face, forcing her stare back to him.
“Promise me. Promise you’ll go through the tunnel and not look back.”
    The soldiers’ shouts, curses and fierce war cries grew in
volume, echoing right along with the rhythmic clap of their horses hooves.
    “I’ve heard the story of the larakyte princess, who
as a little girl was locked in a room all alone.” His stare fairly glowed. “I
love you all the more for your bravery right now. Just…stay strong. Do it for
me, for your people. Promise me you’ll go through that tunnel.”
    Heart splintering in a thousand pieces, she nodded.
    He kissed her then. Hard. Passionately.
    Oh dear god. Was this goodbye?
    But she couldn’t yell out, couldn’t stop him as he retrieved
the torch and turned away, plunging the rear of the cave into darkness. She
clutched at the cold, damp stone, fighting back panicked sobs even as Judas
barked out orders for his servants to shift shape and fight the enemy.
    Shift shape?
    Beneath the flickering lights on the farther side of the
cavern, servants began to change. Slow but steady. Not the instantaneous shift
that could well be fatal.
    Her eyes widened, her mouth dropping open.
    No. Way.
    But of course the eunuchs were no larakytes. They
were mylantites . Horse shifters, believed to be extinct.
    The eunuchs’ poison-tipped spears thudded to the ground.
Their muscled limbs evolved into the long, athletic legs of equestrians with
shiny-tipped hooves, their torsos lengthening into the barrel-shape of a horse,
with long white tails and manes.
    She blinked. The eunuchs as horses were the one and same
grays who’d pulled their king’s carriage.
    The cotesh women had almost fully turned into
eagles—golden eagles—their beady eyes focused overhead as they snapped the air
with their huge, newly formed wings.
    Kyskyts had once graced the air in the thousands,
until humans had hunted the eagles from the skies, killing even the ones
without shape-shifting blood to ensure they rid the world of all possible
shifters.
    The mylantites hadn’t fared any better. Even the ones
who’d been unknowingly used as mounts by humans had to shift eventually. And
humans had learned to put a stallion with a mare in season to bring about their
change and vice-versa.
    The eunuchs had clearly been gelded in their horse form,
which had stilled their urge to mate and involuntarily shift. Hell. She could
only imagine the pain they’d endured, as much by not shifting to stop the
procedure as the